January 2014

January 31, 2014

Mike, my awesome UPS guy, just dropped off a package containing the first copies of the paperback edition of Exploding The Phone! It's on amazon and should be in bookstores very soon, if it's not there already.

(Hard to believe it's been a year since the hardback edition came out. How time flies.)

January 24, 2014

Ah, ESPIONAGE. Nothing got the attention of FBI agents faster than that word back in the 1960s.

In April 1967 the telephone company discovered a bunch of mysterious electrical and telephone equipment in the basement of the Chi Phi medical fraternity at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. Among other items, including an assortment of random locks and keys, they found a touch-tone telephone dial pad that had been modified to make the "fourth column" touch-tone digits used to activate the military's AUTOVON telephone network.

One of my favorite bits in the file is from an AT&T Long Lines memo on the topic. In it, the writer says the engineers did a good job figuring out what all the equipment was, but missed a few critical points:

(Accessing a military computer via dial-up and recording the output on tape? In 1967? Wow.)